This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1799 edition. Excerpt: ... with invocation, sometimes with confession; sometimes dwelling longer on one part, sometimes on another, As the hardships of a religious Sunday are often so pathetically pleaded, as making one of the heavy burdens of religion--and as the friends of religion are so often called upon to mitigate its intolerable rigours, by recommending pleasant employment--might not such an exercise, as has been here suggested, _ help, by varying its occupations, to lighten its load? The habits of the pupil being thus early formed, her memory, attention, and intellect being bent in a right direction, and the exercise invariably maintained, may we not reasonably hope that her affections also, through divine grace, may become interested in the work, till she will be enabled " to pray with the spirit, and with the understanding PRACTICAL use or ri-; vi/iLE KNOWLEDGE. 187 also?" She will now be qualified to use awellcomposed form, if necessary, with seriousness and advantage; for she will now use it not mechanically, but rationally. That which before appeared to her a mere mass of good words, will now appear asignificant composition, exhibiting variety, and regularity, and beauty; and while she will have the farther advantage of being enabled by her improved judgment to distinguish and select for her own purpose such prayers as are more judicious and more scriptural, it will also habituate her to look for plan. and design, and lucid order, in other works. CHAPTER XIV. The practical use of female knowledge, with ii sketch of the female character, and n comparative view of the sexes. THE chief end to be proposed in cultivating the understandings of women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of life. Their knowledge is not often, like the...